Streets and Blocks

II. The rural laneway Category: Circulation Subcategory: Thoroughfare types II. The rural laneway Category: Circulation Subcategory: Thoroughfare types The laneway is found towards the other end of the Transect from its city cousin, the urban alley. Historically, it comes about as an isolated rural dwelling is joined by others, progressively closer. Its appearance as common ground signals a crucial moment: the inauguration of a village. A laneway is even less finished than a road. A road is to the front of the dwelling, while the lane is the utilitarian access to the fields to the rear. Laneways were originally created to circulate animals, produce, and farm implements along the outside edge of a cluster of dwellings, at the line of the utility buildings. Laneways therefore tended to press up against boundaries, such as watercourses, changes of topography, or the fences and walls of the fields. In a contemporary village, the laneway becomes available for parking, but retains a humble, often appealing, character. A chicken would not look out of place crossing, and it is, of course, a childhood playground paradise. Laneways are intrinsically interlocked with natural features and inevitably are interesting routes to walk. As the transaction zone between community life and the open landscape, laneways accumulate a wide variety of transitional features: walls, gateways, pergolas, and utility buildings of all sorts. Beyond a fundamental agreement about line of travel, the laneway should be tolerant of a variety of building dispositions and functions. It should assimilate existing topography, following the grade. Needless to say, it should be paved as lightly as possible and its drainage should be by percolation. Laneways can be introduced into the urban fabric of newly designed communities as a rural weave, bringing the countryside into the town. Nothing is more delightful than walking into an urban house in Virginia or the Cotswolds and seeing the countryside intact out the back. Even where the urban grid has expanded and the countryside disappeared, the rural weave can persist, providing both city and country living from the same dwelling. This requires extra deep lots (to sustain the width of the country weave) and the clear intention of creating two radically different, immersive environments. Berlin, with its very large blocks (800 feet deep) often manages a surprisingly rural environment, complete with wood lots and country lanes, within the hard metropolitan crust of its perimeter blocks. A variation of this dialectic was put forth by Colin Rowe. When asked what was his favorite city, he replied: “Out the front door, London; out the back door, Los Angeles.”